Moving Your Practice Online

Day 1: Adapting your Method

Live Participants: 67

Recorded on: March 20th, 2020

We all provide slightly different things for our clients, and our clients come to us for different reasons. How a personal trainer meets with their clients online is going to be different than a counselor, or a massage therapist (you heard me right—even LMTs).

Task number one is identifying exactly what it is you provide for your clients. Together we’ll walk through a process of defining that thing very concretely, only to then widen that definition into something more abstract. When we bring it back to a concrete application, it will be one you can offer from a computer screen.

Live Text Transcript:

Tiffany Thoen : Hi everyone! So glad to see all of you! Excited for this! Joshua McGirk to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Super proud to be moderating with you today, just FYI.From Tiffany Thoen to Joshua McGirk(Privately) : Yay, me too!! Thanks:)From Emily Corso to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Thanks for the invite to this!From Tiffany Thoen to Emily Corso(Privately) : HI!! So glad you made it! From Tiffany Thoen to lisa tongel(Privately) : Hi! So glad to see you made it! From lisa tongel to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Hi Tiffany! Thanks for letting me know about it. I’m glad to be here. Nice to see you.From Heather Rider to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : I am an anxiety specialist who uses energy work and intuitive guidance and coachingFrom Dana Highfill to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Float therapy, massage therapy, sound therapy. Personally I also offer readings.From lisa tongel to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Hi, You know I’m an acupuncturist. 🙂 I guess that fits into somatics. SO that’s great!From HannahManson to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : I am a recreation therapist! So my work is focused on both mental and physical wellness and overall quality of lifeFrom Ellen Letten to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Brain health coaching for cognitive decline, but also managing a facility of 40 practitioners and educators.From Joshua McGirk : Thanks everyone! I’ll pass these along to Kevin.From Tiffany Thoen to Heather Rider(Privately) : Ohh, love that! From Tiffany Thoen to Dana Highfill(Privately) : What a cool way to bring in multiple modalities! From Tiffany Thoen to HannahManson(Privately) : Love that! Sooo beneficial! From Ellen Letten to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Running triage for them from London, my biz is in Chicago 🥴 So grateful to be able to share this resource with themFrom Tiffany Thoen to Ellen Letten(Privately) : That is a huge task in a normal setting….so glad you are here and doing so much to support them so they can continue to help!From Tiffany Thoen : What problem is that discomfort solving? From Tiffany Thoen : Rather than soothing, can I give my clients permission to do that uncomfortable behavior to keep themselves safe? De-stigmatizing From Taylor : When someone comes in and says they have pain, one of the question to ask yourselves is what is the thing the brain would rather hurt than feel?From RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Can you give examples? Hard to relate to my experience with clients.From Tiffany Thoen : pain is not random, we are moving through the world in ways (strategy) to keep ourselves safe these strategies have consequences…From Taylor : Not broken – just solving a problem. Is this the only way to solve that problem?From Katherine Kozioziemski to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Pain can be mental, emotional or physical. From Tiffany Thoen : Feeling called to share my own experience- testimonial! Kevin healed my 10 yr old back injury (I had been diagnosed with a couple of herniated discs and seen many, many providers with little progress) now my pain is completely gone. From Taylor : Can we make it safe to feel uncomfortable? From Jenn Farrington to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : This is so fascinating, and it seems to sit on the edge of my scope as an LMT in OR… any thoughts on how to navigate avoiding falling out of our scope?From Tiffany Thoen to Jenn Farrington(Privately) : Great question, I will bring it up with Kevin momentarily. In the mean time, thinking about what is under tension and pain for your clients? From Taylor : Visualization is a very potent tactic. Possibly imagine mirroring and moving with them as they get up and down off the floor. This way you can possibly imagine what they might be doing. From Taylor : Permission to make a conclusion – and be totally wrong about it. 🙂 From Taylor : Practice makes progress 🙂 as Tiffany said, trust that your sensing touch can still come through this platform. From Tiffany Thoen : Be open to abstraction to serve your clients better, so you can be as effective as possible From Tiffany Thoen : Feelings are sometimes uncomfortable, its ok to be uncomfortable, and we can make it safe to be uncomfortableFrom Taylor : Deficit of touch is going to create emotions in us.From Taylor : Anxious, lonely, unworthy, a lot of narrative around deficit of touch. And that’s okay.From Taylor : Be messy and curious together! So much growth and learning to have. This is a new way for others to access some services they possibly couldn’t afford, or have time to attend, or have the emotional/courageous bandwidth to show up in person.From Tiffany Thoen : Why do they come to see YOU?From Taylor : What is it that you do in your private sessions that give people a sense of connection? From Joshua McGirk : What is your inherent value that only you can bring to an online program?From Joshua McGirk : There is no template to follow here, other than your safe space modality.From Tiffany Thoen : It’s the way you make somebody feel safe? What is special about that? How can you bring that in? From James M Brody to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Concern regarding understanding capabilities regarding mental health. Pushing scope capability in this realm may lead to a situation that the practitioner is not equipped to deal with.From Taylor : To anybody’s monkey brain saying you don’t have or are struggling to believe that you have any value to add – you do. I promise, if you’re here, you do. From RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Much more sensation, more awarenessFrom Tiffany Thoen : We can mitigate some of the pain by allowing them to experience their own bodies. Can your clients hands be a proxy? From RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : How does the practice you mentioned earlier of imagine mirroring them and moving with them change the relationship? How does it overcome the barrier of apparent separation by distance?From Trenton Kowalcuzk to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Good morning, I love the feedback and moderating skills you showed. I shared the post to a recreation therapist page on fb. It’s good to see we got one on. As a recreation therapist, this has been fun work to play with.From Taylor : Day 1 – AbstractionDay 2 – Tools and Mechanisms and how we deliver OnlineDay 3 – Connecting with people, intimate space while not in the same roomDay 4 – Clips of Kevin’s online sessions, prolonged Q&AFrom Taylor : https://reembody.me/product/moving-your-practice-online/From Taylor : The face is one of the most rich sensations of how a person feels. What you’re watching what someone is going through it creates a model of that in you.From Taylor : It helps you feel close and seen. From Allyna Steinberg to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : that’s very coolFrom Tiffany Thoen to Allyna Steinberg(Privately) : Thanks! Love it soooo much:)From Tiffany Thoen : recovering people pleaserFrom Taylor : Tiffany I feel seenFrom Joshua McGirk : People pleasing is a very noble profession that’s served us all very well.From Erin Eichenberger, LMT to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Thanks for naming the “recovering” bit…I don’t necessarily want to praise the people-pleasing part in myself despite the fact that I can see it is a source of “safety” for meFrom Tiffany Thoen to Erin Eichenberger, LMT(Privately) : Yes! For me I had to work through that after serious burnout. But its still a tendency that comes up sometimes, and I am fluid soooo, lolFrom Tiffany Thoen to Erin Eichenberger, LMT(Privately) : I mean fluid in that ever changing, not related to genderFrom RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Is there any conflict with charging for online service as a massage therapist when cannot touch, limited by scope of practice, license?From Tiffany Thoen to RosiG(Privately) : Not that I am aware of, would double check with your licencing body, I know many Reiki providers practice onlineFrom Amanda MacDonald to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Music always counts!!!From Tiffany Thoen to Amanda MacDonald(Privately) : Such a great way to experience richness of the human experience. From RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Oregon. Call it something different, yes!From Tiffany Thoen : negotiation, co-creationFrom Tiffany Thoen : Thank you!!!From RosiG to Tiffany Thoen(Privately) : Thank you for this discussion of my question. Helps a lot.